We have announced our plans for Participatory Budgeting for this year which gives residents a chance to comment on some capital expenditure, and also allows us to gauge reaction. We will learn lessons from this year’s exercise and aim to expand it next year.
We have debated long and hard how best to carry out the exercise. Local government finances are complex and there are a number of things which we have to do that don’t have a high public profile but are nonetheless essential.
These include such things such as safeguarding people from abuse, carrying out regulatory functions, etc. It was important to us to ensure that the exercise we carry out gives people the opportunity to make informed choices that don’t set off one group or geographic area against another. We hope this year gives people some sensible choices that they feel they can make informed contributions and would really welcome feedback on how we can improve this to broaden participation in future years.